Happy Birthday II

We both had a great nights' sleep. We had talked about doing a low key day today..getting unpacked, signed in here on the base and generally hanging out and having a birthday!

Our favorite cheetah came to visit!

While the others were still sleeping we wandered around..
This beautiful cherry tree is beside the Baird's house.

Chippy Two (Executive Officer) lives here :-)
(That's our Dave!)

Sarah the goldfish came to live here today.
Her family is moving back to the states.

It turned out to be such a nice day that we decided to go on our first adventure...

to the train...

smooth, clean, on time-GREAT!

We rode west to Odawara Castle, founded in the mid-15th century. It is a national historic site and the renovations are still ongoing. It was a delightful afternoon....

Lunch stop at the foot of the Castle Keep.

Inside the Keep are exhibits of Odawara
history and Samurai culture.

There were windows on the way up

overlooking the cherry trees below...exquisite roofs

and at the very top there were walkways
around the outside of the building

The mountains to the north

The train station and town to the east..
the Sagami Bay to the west.
Back down at the bottom...time to walk the grounds.

The flowering plums were beautiful also.

Now just some pictures of the grounds...

Akagane-mon Gate (copper gate)

Inner Mote

Cherry Blossoms

Wall construction model

Hotoku Ninomlya-jinja Shrine

As we were leaving we stopped to watch the archeologists doing the excavations below. It was a wonderful afternoon. On the way back to the train station we stopped...

at a pastry store---yum!

don't know what was cooking in here-

smelled great!

back to the train...

an hour after we got home the birthday
boy got treated to this wonderful dinner...

that ended with cake and a song...

Happy Birthday to You!
What a way to celebrate!!

And we're off....

We were up at 3:30 am and off to the airport for a 7:35 flight to Atlanta and then on to Japan!! We're off to see Jill and family! It turned out we didn't leave RDU until 9:20. But, we got to Atlanta in plenty of time for our connection. Grabbed a quick bite to tide us over until they fed us on the plane and we were off ... well after they unloaded cargo and burned off fuel because we were too heavy for takeoff....finally left an hour late. But, then it was a great flight--great on demand movies and Jean actually got a few hours of sleep. John and I were in seats one behind the other....and after 13 1/2 very long hours we arrived at Narita Airport north of Tokyo along with our baggage :-) Sailed through immigrations and customs and got to meet Jill and they appeared in just a few minutes.

Everybody happy now!

Stopped on the way to the car for some ice cream--yum--

cherry blossom ice cream in honor of all the cherry blossoms around Japan right now. Colin had run into a chair and got a beauty of a black eye...much better now!
It was very dark and rainy when we arrived. Jill had taken the boys into Tokyo to a Museum during the day and then came to get us and we headed home...about 1 1/2 drive south to Atsugi Naval Air Station. Dave and Riley were there when we finally arrived. We didn't get to see much on the drive down as it was raining really hard a good deal of the time. We had a little mac and cheese for dinner and
got the boys to bed (Colin is on Spring Break this week) and a glass of wine with conversation and about 9:45 we hit the wall (13 hour time change and 29 hours since we'd gotten up) and we crashed and had a great nights' sleep! Very happy to be here!

Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter to you all! The Easter bunny made a brief stop here with some small baskets.
After a Farmer's Breakfast casserole we headed to church. It was a wonderful service with full orchestra, choir and organ that ended with the Alleluia Chorus. Great sermon also. Nicely done! We headed home and frosted the cake for dinner and checked out the garden.

The birthday boy was still celebrating by hanging out!

Gretchen divided the iris she took out for the Jasmine

Pretty anenome...
Lilac :-)

After a nice afternoon we headed to some friends of Gretchen's for dinner. Had great ham, spinach madeline, potato casserole, green salad, and carrot cake! Great company and great food...very fun Easter. Thanks Matt and Sarah! And thanks Gretchen for a great visit! We headed home Monday to finish packing and get to bed early....long day on Tuesday!!!

The beginning of another adventure!

We drove to Gretchen's yesterday afternoon after Dad finished his Friday volunteer activities. It was a beautiful day for a drive! Got to Christiansburg and were greeted by Mason and Gretchen! We came to mulch and celebrate Easter! She had already gotten the bulk of the mulching done and the gardens looked great! Her candy tuft is spectacular as is a lilac. She had a nice surprise for Dad after dinner.

Happy Birthday to You!

Up this morning and ready to mulch, but turns out it's not going to happen this weekend...too bad. So we decided to head to the Virginia Tech campus and visit the horticulture gardens there.
Spring is just arriving here and the bulbs are glorious. Lots of tulips, daffodils and flowering trees.

Let the photographers begin!

Spice Bush

Bleeding Heart
There was a beautiful water element with falls...

that ran down to this wonderful pond complete with ducks.

A beautiful arbor with wisteria...

Mason, the ultimately patient photo partner.

After a wonderful couple of hours wandering around we headed back home to leave Mason and then Jean headed for her favorite Goodwill Bookstore (it's a freestanding building and wonderful!). Gretchen and John headed for Lowe's and Walmart to buy some needed items for our trip and then some new plants for Gretchen's yard.

Planting the new Carolina Jasmine...

and Gretchen in her favorite tree--a wonderful weeping
willow that is now big enough to really weep!